JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel is phasing out the use of a military-run detention camp for Palestinians captured during the Gaza war, where rights groups alleged prisoner abuse, justice officials said on Wednesday.
State lawyers told the Supreme Court that prisoners held at the Sde Teiman site, which opened after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel that sparked the war in Gaza, would be gradually moved to permanent detention centers.
Transfers have begun and most prisoners would be relocated within a few weeks. This could improve conditions in the meantime, they said.
State Attorney Aner Helman told the court in response to a petition filed by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel that 700 prisoners had already been transferred to Ofer, a military stockade in the West Bank. Another 500 would be transferred in the coming weeks, leaving 200 in Sde Teiman, whose future had yet to be decided.
The Israeli military is investigating the deaths of Palestinians captured during the Gaza war, as well as the Sde Teiman facility.
(Reporting by Dan Williams and Ari Rabinovitch; Editing by Alex Richardson)
